


The Man He Left Behind

by BartyMellvue



Category: Grand Theft Auto IV, Grand Theft Auto Series (Video Games), Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: Content Warnings added per chapter, Elements of Jealousy, Ending C: The Third Way, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Rating subject to change, Time To Resolve Unresolved Feelings, UL Paper isn't some kind of reunite old boyfriends service but LESTER IS
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:21:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22290094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BartyMellvue/pseuds/BartyMellvue
Summary: Despite making a score so big that nobody had any reason to stay, everybody remained in Los Santos, and against their own better judgement, kept doing what they'd been doing most of their lives— albeit on a smaller, less destructive scale.The punishment Packie McReary gets five long years after he got on his very first airplane, leaving the only city he'd ever known in hopes of escaping his agony? Coming face to face with the one person it hurt too much to say goodbye to.
Relationships: Michael De Santa/Trevor Philips, Niko Bellic/Packie McReary
Comments: 13
Kudos: 32





	1. I See The Rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the Big One, Packie returns to his life of relative solitude in Los Santos, and while having trouble coping with the size of his cut, is recruited to once again to be included in Michael, Trevor, and Franklin's crew— but for the very first time, outside of the context of a job. Sure fucking took them long enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part of me feels like this is too exposition-y for now, but I guess that's what a prologue is for... i love Niko and Packie. Packo. Nickie. But there isn't any content being actively made so i literally got into V so i could get invested in something that had slightly more active fans. lol. please love my kings

It was never about the money. _Clearly._ Or at least, not anymore. If it was still about the money, then why was Packie living in a place only nominally better than where he was _before_ he had twenty four million dollars quietly deposited into his bank account last month? Sure, he _did_ buy another Comet, same model year as the one that he’d wrecked some years back, but that seemed to be it for him. 

No interest in buying some mansion in the hills. No fancy fuckin’ clothes. He wasn't even compelled to throw his money around like it was nothing at Tequi-la-la, scoring with any gorgeous, gold-digging, empty headed _plastic_ girl he wanted. If he'd gone out to get up to business as usual, but with _rich people_ this time around— suffering from all of the negative effects of the drug he'd been using longer than most of his friendships have lasted in _style,_ there was no doubt in his mind that he would be dead within the next 48 hours. _Nothing was fucking stopping him._

He had no friends keeping him in check, and hadn't lived with any kind of family, for _years_ now. You'd think he’d let himself become just as bad as Derrick, _God rest his soul,_ in the last years of his life, now that he had the same stability as any A-list celebrity in LS, but he didn't even have the _drive_ to. Like, it was as if there was this nameless gland in his brain that held all of his instincts of self preservation— and it grew three sizes in the days following that score, _which was strange,_ considering how there was no change when he blew through his money almost immediately after he came here at the start of the recession, touching down at LSIA with the initial plan to _give up_ the game, give a go at whatever he'd wanted to do that didn't involve wasting anybody— and suddenly every choice he made was between drugs or eating.

To be fair, the drugs would win out once in a while— cocaine would keep him from desiring food, _and he'd already maintained an aversion to it after so long,_ but at 90 dollars a gram, you’re paying much, _much_ more to starve... And it was right back to small crime again, living like shit, payout to payout, (or paycheck to paycheck when he was able to hold down any kind of _real_ person’s job,) for the past few years. 

But that all changed when he finally got to meet _one_ other person in the life, one just as capable as he was, and his standards were finally returning to how it was in LC. The Vangelico heist? He went home for rails without needing to think about the money. Shit, his cut was more than he got from his take at _Liberty Bank—_ so naturally, he went back to his old amount from before he had to fuckin’ budget that shit _,_ and the comedown afterwords knocked him off his ass. Real opportunity to have a look inward about his partying habit for the first time in a long time. He was _right_ when he prophesied not making it to his third decade of life if he kept it going at that same pace.

But he kept the full 24 million, at least at the beginning. Thinking critically was one thing, but for the very first time, he was scared _shitless_ by his own dependency.

_I'll fucking try it,_ he thought, _I'll try going off the shit._

Wasn't _fun._ And it seems as though all of his social skills went down the fuckin’ shitter without the influence. Nobody on this God forsaken coast wanted to interact in the same way in bars as they did back east. If you don't know anybody here when you come in, if you don't have coke, you don't have X, you don't have pot, you don't have meth? Fuck you. Drink alone, you vanilla bastard. And he did. The alcohol might be all he’ll have left if he manages to keep this up. 

_Drinking alone._ In his beautiful red sports car, in a parking garage, with nowhere to go. 

That was, of course, until his phone started ringing, seeing the bright light of the screen emanating from beneath the passenger seat, of which it fell under, making him scramble to get it in time, answering before he’d even looked at the contact, he’d made a double take afterwords up to see that it was his contact under _M_ , without any picture for him.

_“Yeah?”_ He mumbles as an answer into the phone, his eyes absently darting around as you do when you don't have anything to look at, but don't want to look like an asshole with your phone in front of your face as opposed to by your ear.

“Packie—” Michael’s voice seemed to be interrupted, as if the phone had been dropped and then picked back up, noise sounding like something brushed up against the mic. He rolls his eyes, as the lip of a beer bottle graced his.

“Yeah, what the hell is it? What is it we got to do left? Kidnap a politician?”

“—No! No, actually I was wondering if you were still _here_ .” And not in the Carribean, or possibly Ireland, or some other little landmass, or _series_ of land masses you may or may not retreat to after seemingly pulling off your biggest heist. “We were gonna ask if you were free right now, or the next couple hours, and if you’d wanna go out drinking with us.” Patrick’s eyebrows raised, a smile beginning to affect the curvature of his lips as it creaked up one of the corners of his mouth, before letting out a sound of distaste through his teeth.

“Oh, so takes ya this long to take me out drinking after you pegged me for every fuckin’ heist? Takes you until now to try to establish somethin’ outside of business? You don't think I got any friends of me own, you don't think I have anythin’ better to do, huh? _Mike?”_

_“N—”_ Before he could get a single, full word out, Packie responds a bit too quickly to be considered comedically timed correctly by anybody other than him, 

“—Well you're completely fuckin’ _right,_ boy. Come pick me up.” 

“Alright! You still living on Alta Place?” Packie has been taken aback, literally even, as his head sort of leaned back, with a look of surprise which nobody could see. He'd only been there the one time, dropping him off there when they’d met in that awful small-time theft where he came to his rescue.

“Hell no. _Shit,_ remind me not to cross ya when you remember where I lived. I’m at Milton now, though.”

“Well, how soon can you be ready?”

“No time at all, man. See ya whenever, just call me again when you're here, yeah?”

“Great, see ya then.” He’d hung up with Mike’s response, opening the window to huck the mostly-finished beer against the concrete wall without any second thought about shattered glass in a parking garage, especially with how satisfying the sound was to him before he drove out of there with screeching tires to make his way back to his apartment building to get into an outfit that was a just a little more impressive, and reflective of his personality, of course.

“Hey, we got him.” 

“Really?? Frank, c’mon, switch with me! I’m gonna sit back here with him, I feel like we can really get something going, we’ve both got this _vibe—_ ” Trevor, without much further warning, easily dove over the seat in order to get in the back, much to the youngest man’s annoyance as he’d basically toppled over him in the struggle to get back there.

“Man, what the hell?”

“If you and Packie share a _vibe_ , T, I have no idea what it is, he seems way more well-adjusted than you.”

~

While standing at the top of the building’s steps, under the front display’s white lights, Patrick pops the collar to his jacket. And then he unpops it. No, no, he pops it again. It's back in, right? Wait, fuck, no, he doesn't care about that shit! He unpops the popped collar just as his pocket starts vibrating again, and he was much quicker to answer this time around. 

“Hey, I’m out here. I don't see ya.” Mike’s laugh on the other side of the line is low, maybe just a little menacing, but _exciting._

“Oh, _you’ll know when you see us.”_

A 1961 four-door estate Peyote pulls around the corner, in the timely robin’s egg blue, sticking out like a sore thumb— or maybe, sticking out like a _movie star_ in the sea of muted, rounded out cars that all looked the same and came in the same few boring color tones, _oatmeal_ , as he’d call it, compared to it. He trots down the stairs, coming up to the car, putting his hands on it and letting out a _moan,_ his body arching backwards. 

“Look at this car, _beautiful_ fuckin’ car!” He says, opening one of the back doors up and having to crouch down to get into the thing, his eyes first meeting Trevor’s. “Hey, ya crazy fuck, how _you_ been surviving?” Giving him an almost too rough shove in the side as he got in, shutting the door behind him. It was really all in the _demeanor,_ the overfamiliarity he had with his greeting and the physical contact, all the difference between getting strangled and being adored.

“You see what I mean, Mikey? Patrick and I are on the same wavelength!”

_“Sure you are.”_

“I mean, it's the drugs, isn't it? It's _definitely_ the drug history,” Trevor suggests, for it to be met with agreement, and instead of giving him any sort of pause, he just rolls with it

“Oh, cocaine permanently altered my personality, yeah. I think we’re all like this. Being able to bond with _fucking metheads_ like you is weird, but I guess stimulants is fuckin’ stimulants.”

 _“We are all one drug, the human drug—”_ Franklin mutters mockingly under his breath, as the radio is turned back on to LSRR, at the tail end of _We Built This City,_ the warm hum of Kenny Loggins’ voice already chiming in, but ignored as Michael spoke up.

“How do you feel about Shenanigan’s?”

_Every once in awhile I think about playing a real deep cut, and then I go, you know what? I’m gonna play a one hit wonder, but one of the weird ones._

“We were also thinking about the Vanilla Unicorn. Drinks are on T, the place is his.”

_This is Q Lazzarus, Goodbye Horses._

The haunting synthesizers brought everything on at once for Packie. Suddenly, his chest felt entirely different— the absence of his heart, maybe, as it was dropping into his stomach. Michael hadn't even listened for a response, as the song captured his attention for a completely different reason, but it was Trevor who made the first reaction be known.

_“_ Now _this_ is a _song._ Good song. _Love this fucking song!”_ And Mike sat there in the front, making a wide turn as his mouth had been shut _tight_ to prevent himself from making any sound before he had to.

“Oh, you would. Of _course_ you would [ . ](https://youtu.be/SFbpfNBBXfg)” His other half made note of his voice, of which sounded like it had been about to go into hysterics— and it had only taken him a second to realize just what he meant by that, grabbing onto the back of the bench seat to lean forward and shout in his displeasure.

“Fuck _OFF,_ Michael! I shouldn't even have to explain to you how _disgusting_ that is of you to even make that joke, you _asshole! It’s not yours to make!”_

Packie had just about tuned all this out, only hoping that he didn't look the way that he felt, as his arms began folding, clutching his own body as his gaze drifted out the window.

~2008~

They were in a junky Voodoo— it looked great, of course, but it drove like shit. Not that _he_ had any problem with it. He wasn't the one driving. 

He was sure that Niko had actually improved since he first met him, too. Driving like an angel, rain or shine, making the most perfect square turns with any size car, and the only time a downed pedestrian happens is when he’s mowing somebody over on purpose.

Liberty Rock Radio played. It’s not like Packie would ever allow him to play anything else while he was there with him, would he?

Maybe he did it to be funny, maybe it was genuine, but Niko let out the smallest gasp, _barely_ opening his mouth as this song seemed to be playing for the twentieth time.

_“Great music.”_

“Y’know, you keep sayin’ that.”

He didn't really know the words. He sort of just mumbled the vowels, that’s how he sang most of the songs, and really, so did most people with English as a _first_ language.

_“All things pass…”_

“Yeah, that’s the line that ya know.” And despite the fact that Packie was clearly taking the piss out of him, he didn't really care, and mockingly turned the stereo up.

 _“Innnnnto_ the _night,_ and _I say—_ ”

“Fuckin’ _enunciate,_ you're _living_ here now, isn't the music supposed to help your language skills insteada _wreck_ them?” Niko’s eyes refused to leave the road, and Packie’s refused to leave his smile, of which only _he_ had become so well acquainted with.

“I’m enunciating just as much as she is."

“You know, you can look ‘em up real easy, lyrics, on the internet. Don't have to sound like a confused, dyin’ animal for all of this.”

“Well, that would ruin the... Learning experience of the song for me. I think the guessing part is the— the _enriching_ part of it.”

“Oh, I see you learned a new word today, huh?” 

“Maybe I did. _Dickhead.”_

“Come on, Niko boy, your favorite part’s comin' up, you don't wanna miss it. You gonna sing it with me?” Packie started rolling down his window, despite the fact that he was going to be pelted in the face with forty-something degree rain, all to make _him_ laugh, and it was working, enough for him to roll down his as well, the two of them loudly droning out for all of Algonquin to hear,

_Goodbye horses, I’m flying over you_

_Goodbye horses, I’m flying over you_

_Goodbye horses, I’m flying over you_

_Goodbye horses, I’m flying, flying, flying_

_Over you_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 4/20/20: I JUST EDITED THIS CHAPTER AFTER I REREAD IT AND IT WAS THE WORST THING I EVER READ IF YOU READ THIS IN ITS ORIGINAL STATE IM SO FUCKING SORRY


	2. You Don't Know How To Ease My Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friendly outing doesn't pan out to be as fun for Packie as he'd expected— and he unknowingly becomes the center of attention after Trevor picks up on this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only took a month of stewing about this, but here it is! CITDAN will be updated soon, but I'm also going to be publishing several oneshots from this universe during the events of IV.  
> I removed the trikey tag from this fic for a bit cuz it felt deceptive but now we finally have some stuff going on in that corner so i felt good about re-adding it
> 
> WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE REVENGE ENDING OF GTA IV AHEAD. TURN BACK NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED.

In all honesty, wherever this was, it wasn't a good place for Patrick to be right now. He was getting _loaded,_ and his had been _melting_ with the music that had been playing on this short playlist, of which there were probably only three… No, _two_ songs he would admit to liking on it— Trevor seemed to be in the middle of forcing Michael to apologize to one of the girls for his behavior, or whatever, which confused him— and seemed to confuse her as well. 

It really wasn't his fault, losing interest almost immediately into the night out, _before it got started,_ and he really wanted to pretend that he hadn't, as well as pretend that he didn't know _exactly_ how he was brought down so soon, and so _easily._ Tonight was supposed to be fucking awesome, getting reacquainted with his body that was functioning at a capacity he hadn't been familiar with in maybe a _decade,_ all for it to have been ruined the very moment he got into that fucking car and got _heartsick_ over… Over _their song_ playing. _Fuck._ No amount of alcohol was going to suddenly make him interested in tits and ass right now, not in this state. It was devastating.

“Wait, so what exactly did he do?” Peach asks, just the tips of her fingers touching Mike’s chest, looking to Trevor with an expression that said, _okay, I’m trying to follow, but I still don't know what's happening right now._

“Yeah, so _Goodbye Horses_ comes on, all I say is, _Oh, I love this song!_ And then he goes, Oh, you _would,”_ Trevor says, just as Michael was chiming in, beginning to try to explain what that really meant, and it took her almost the same amount of time of the wheels turning in her head to realize— but instead letting out a very sudden _shriek_ laugh, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, before collecting herself in the _fraction_ of a second,

“—Michael, that’s not funny!”

“You— You _laughed!_ What do you mean it's not funny?” He asks, this time with a more indignant tone in his voice, but the dancer tried to respond to this by migrating her manicured hand to his shoulder, and as much as Trevor would usually want to see Michael be piled onto by a third party that agrees that he’s wrong about whatever it is at the moment, he was observably distracted, looking all the way across the room towards the man that sat at the bar.

“I know I laughed but that— that’s because in a _way_ it _could_ be funny but— but not from you, _you can't make that joke,_ the way we feel about the movie, the trope, as a community…?” While Trevor would have _loved_ to see Michael simultaneously be charmed, embarrassed, quickly come around, and _better himself_ with the understanding, he had wordlessly drifted away from the conversation entirely, leaving Mike totally defenseless. He could have been calling his name, asking him where he was going, but he wasn't quite hearing him.

Patrick was running his hand over his head, fingers brushing against his short, short hair that hadn’t been buzzed in more than a few weeks, periodically coming back to the whiskey that had been poured for him. Trevor had come up from behind him, clapping a hand to his shoulder and sitting down beside him.

“How you holding up there, goon?” He asks, as the other man barely lifts his head in response, not giving a single glance over, but for whatever reason giving a very real effort in masking his tone of voice in a way that _didn't_ give off the impression that he was spiraling.

“I’m fucking _awesome,_ thanks for asking. You run a tight fuckin’ ship.”

“And the girls?”

_“Beautiful!”_

“So how come you're sitting here, then? Facing this way? In the exact opposite direction of every woman here—” He stops, outstretching a hand in the direction of the bartender, dressed in a tee with the club’s logo emblazoned on her chest, and he raises his voice a little, “Except _Barbara,_ of course, she’s an _angel,_ I’m just happy to be in the same _room_ with her!” Her eyes make a rather cutting roll into the back of her head before leaving the whole bottle in front of the two of them, deciding to leave her post, of which there was hardly any consequence to doing so with him occupied trying to get to the bottom of whatever this man was going through right now. 

“I can still see them in the reflections of the liquor,” he says, holding up his glass and pointing at the distortion of Sapphire’s figure, swishing it around, “Look, I’m makin’ her dance! See that?”

“No man, really, you're fucked up about something, you're not even putting your head in between any body parts to make you feel anything different. What's the matter?” He says, giving him a sort of repeated jab into the side of his arm— _Trevor’s a real touchy guy, ain't he—?_

“Man, I don’t know—” _But he knew exactly._ It wasn't like he was going to talk about this _guy_ he knew… Fuck, already almost five years ago. Hell, he’d already mentioned him before. _“Oh,_ maybe it’s ‘cause I’m sittin’ on over twenty fuckin’ million an’ I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here.” At least he was being truthful. That was more of an overarching problem too, as opposed to that other thing. “M’ brother was a fuckin’ _freedom fighter,_ doing... _Important_ shit," of which he'd previously derided, whether it was because the act of Derrick going states on his colleagues as soon as he'd gotten caught, _or because he didn't really forgive him for leaving when he was small,_ Packie never really figured out why 'the cause' used to make him so bitter. "He put his money in _that,_ meanwhile I feel like if I go unsupervised with mine I’ll probably get meself killed.”

“If you're into the social betterment of—” Trevor waves his hand in a roll, “of _whatever,_ Lester does that kinda thing. He and Frank have a body count.” He gives him an encouraging nudge as you would a bummed out little leaguer, _“Would that make you feel better?_ I mean, we’re also into the robbing of big corporate chains.” Patrick lets out a sneer. He wasn't inclined in that shit at all. But, _bury myself in more stick ups so I don’t think about it too hard, huh?_ A halfhearted smile crept up on his face, this time actually able to look at Trevor as he spoke to him, rather than into his drink,

“Oh, so you _are_ askin’ me to come do more business shit with you instead of us just hangin’ out as friends. I see how ya think of me.”

“This isn't _business,_ it’s male bonding! We’re friends! How ‘bout it?” He slides off of the bar stool rather easy, the dude was somewhat _significantly_ taller than Packie was, an encouraging hand taking its place for a short moment on his back. God, the touching was fucking _weird,_ but he wasn't at all in place to deny it with the kind of social isolation he’d been partaking it, deciding to follow Trevor back to the center catwalk where the show had been happening.

“Yeah, man, I’ll fuckin’ do it. I want more drinks, though—” 

“And we’ll get you some. Hey— if you wanna get in on that whole _‘putting money in good things’_ idea you were talking about, you should get to know Sapphire. Or Nikki. Or Chastity. Redistribution of wealth can start _right here!”_

Michael, having left the conversation with Peach a more understanding man, had returned to the front of the main walk where Franklin was, and had been looking over at the bar once in a while during that short interaction, but Trevor’s hands all over McReary had just become the driving motivation in his inability to take his eyes off of the two of them. Frank could see in his own peripheral vision just how inattentive he was to the dancer who’d been performing barely a foot away from his face. He held onto the bar, leaning his body back to see what it was— his expression immediately becoming dismissive, 

“You concerned about Trevor turnin’ your ass in for the newer, relatable, _drug-addicted_ model?” Mike’s head snapped back towards Frank after he’d been caught staring, 

_“No,”_ his rejection of the insinuation came far too quickly, and a little too loudly in volume for that to not at least be some of the case. “I was just as concerned about Patrick sitting at the bar as he was.”

_“A’ight.”_ But of course, _a’ight_ in this case meaning _I don’t believe a word of that._

Packie held his head up, his whole body a little straighter, having to stand next to him as they made their way back to the center of the club, fuckin’ six foot two motherfucker, sitting down in one of the loveseats pointed towards the front of the stage, a new seating arrangement put together which… Was just a little weird with the context of regular customers coming in, and not this group taking over the place after hours. With one motion with his arm, Trevor summoned _beer,_ and presumably, things could only get better from here— as long as he could level out with the wallowing, and be conscious enough to stop himself before he could spiral. He was so used to doing it alone, but in front of these guys? He was nowhere near comfortable in getting that bad with them.

It wasn’t long before whatever patrons that were left had been pretty much kicked out of the place, or strongly influenced into leaving on their own accord… The rest of them clearing out the moment Trevor insisted that Miss Infernus step aside, his thighs (weakly) gripping the pole, exclaiming that the art of stripping was _in his blood._

Only the lights above the bar and the ones immediately above the main stage were left on, and the only employee still in there company was Juliet, who made her place in Frank’s lap, and it was made abundantly clear that they had some sort of informal _thing_ going on between them.

“You know— I was just thinking…” Michael began, leaning forward in his seat, sat beside Patrick, and looking up towards his partner who was now sitting with his legs hanging off of the riser. “...We never made it to Liberty City, when Trevor and I were touring the East coast.”

“Oh, we _could_ have, but you didn't want to take the risk— of which there wasn't any, I might add.”

“They _expanded the search!”_ He exclaims, and Packie downs the drink that he was on in order to lean forward, to interject,

_“No, no— the man's right, Michael,_ you coulda _moved_ there and gotten away with that shit, population of at least seven million, an’ a police force way more focused on shitting on the innocent people minding their own business…” _And incapable of pinning him down for anything more than once when he was a McReary son,_ “You shoulda gone. There's no place in the world anything like LC.”

“Yeah… You _did_ live there, huh?” Michael was definitely just saying that. Hell, why else would he have brought it up like that? Trev saw it coming from miles away, but Packie’s mind was already too far gone in the drink to pick up on that. “What the hell was _that_ like, living in the most culturally important place in the world?” Shit, what a stark fuckin’ contrast between these guys and _Leo,_ the only dude he did anything with for years in this God forsaken place before he dropped his ass. _Shut up about LC, shut up about the bank job, your family, your friends, I don’t care!_ Clearly this wasn't the case with _them._

“All me life… Only place I ever knew, I never left once. I mean, 'cept to go upstate the one time they got me thrown in the pen for a few months. An’ to see my closest brother, who’s still got at least twenty more years to burn in there.”

_“Sorry about that.”_

“Ahhhh, don’t be. Gerry’s probably _runnin’_ the fuckin’ place. He was still runnin’ the family’s shit from the inside when I jumped ship… Five years ago, comin’ up.”

“Oh yeah,” Mike laughs, “After the biggest stunt they've seen since _Dog Day Afternoon,_ you fucking animal—” His hand formed a little fist, before giving Patrick a jab in his alcohol-numbed shoulder with it, _his attempt to even the score with Philips,_ only to elicit a head shake from Frank, mouthing something over to him. _Man. Stop._ Again, all these carefully measured social interactions meaning nothing to a man who’s only going to vaguely remember this tomorrow. “I remember that wall to wall coverage when it happened… _Of course you had to leave after that, huh?”_

Michael could have never known the intense grief that few words were able to evoke in Packie. 

_No,_ actually, he stayed for _months_ afterwards. Only to be around for when Frankie got shot for some reason or another, _probably by some other corrupt bastard he’d stabbed in the back,_ and only for his sister to be gunned down not that long after, on the steps of the same cathedral they’d held the service, _the last man who got to be with her alive being—_ Packie _blinks,_ realizing he’d gone more than a moment without responding.

_“...Yeah._ Yeah, o’course,” he murmurs, his lips pressing to the glass, tilting his head back to down all of it, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that he was going to hit his limit soon. He was certainly in the right place to stop— Juliet slid out of Frank’s lap, bidding him, as well as the other three a wave goodbye, and the festivities went on for another hour without her; either they had just run out of Pisswasser, or Trevor was too blitzed to remember where the hell they kept the rest of their inventory, so it only felt right for Packie to ask the moment they did—

“Fuck, what fuckin’... What _time_ is it?” Franklin was the first to shift his weight, taking his phone out of his pocket to see, turning on the home screen, taking a sharp inhale hissing through his gritted teeth.

“Fifteen past.”

“Fifteen past _what?”_

 _“Three, fool.”_ With a communal _groan,_ it was all but decided that it was a good time to call it a night, and Michael had been the first to rise.

“You know my kids don't understand that? _Fifteen past, twenty of,_ all of that. Must be a 90’s thing...”

_“Uh, no offense, Mike, but they don't understand a lot of things.”_

Trevor could see the observable _delay_ in Packie’s level of intoxication. Sure, the rest of them weren’t far behind him, but he stood over him, seeing a glaze in his eyes and thinking, _Oh yeah, he’s_ _real_ _fucked._

“...Packie? You comin’, cowboy?”

“Yeah, man, _shit.”_ He uses both the arm and the back of the loveseat to push himself upwards, standing up with a sway. _“Ha,_ you know, Mike, stupid kids ain't bad. You know, and they're probably not stupid at all. Nobody needs to know fuckin’... _Everything!_ Look at me. I think I’m smart about some shit. I mean, I couldn't figure out for the life of me to tie m’ fuckin’ _shoes_ until I was like, _twelve,_ but I’m like—” Patrick takes a fall forward, catching himself and leaning onto the metal bar that separated the patrons from the performers.

_“Don’t finish that thought,”_ Michael says, watching as the younger man struggled to get to his feet unsupported, but his continuing response hindered only by the slurring of his speech. 

“I still don't… I still don't really know _cursive_ . _Reading_ it, that shit’s… _Hard… Writin’_ it? _Fuck_ that!” God, Trevor couldn't stop _laughing_ , all low, under his breath, when Packie’s inability to walk any better than an eleven month old was just _killing_ him.

“You need any help there?”

“Pfffsdsshh… _NO!”_ The upper half of his body seems to take a dive, his knees bend, and it seems to counter it, sending him a little bit backwards, his arms straight out by his sides, and for now, able to made it. “I'm fuckin’... _Fuck you!_ Lookin’ at me, like I’m some kinda idiot. Just fuckin’ squiggles! _You don't need’m anymore! Useless fucking bullshit, is what cursive is!”_

“You're drunk, man—” 

_“We’re all drunk! The fuck you lookin’ at me for?”_ And that was true, just watching Trevor drop his keys _twice_ trying to lock up after they left the building, everybody piling into the car on the agreement that Mike would be the one driving again— and in the same seating arrangement they came in, before unleashing themselves onto the streets of Los Santos. _Did Mike really drive any better sober?_

“Jesus, Packie, grab onto something— don’t you remember not having any seatbelts?”

_“How old do you think I am, asshole?_ M’ brothers, maybe, but I’ve worn seatbelts me _whole life,_ you _ancient fuck!”_ The following slam on the breaks that sent Patrick’s face into the back of the front seat may or may not have been intentional, and Trevor almost _howled_ with laughter, as Frank came to Packie’s defense,

“Mike, your drivin’ is makin’ us all fuckin’ sick, not just scarecrow back there.”

“Like— Like the _Wizard of Oz? Tin Man was the one almost falling over—”_

“Man, you suck. _I can’t make one motherfuckin’ reference to anythin’ without you tearin' it apart. Shit…”_ There was a buzzing and an accompanying obnoxious ringtone, the light of his phone brightening through the fabric of Michael’s pocket.

_“Ah, hell—_ Hey, Trace.” The change in his voice drawing their attention, Trevor propping his chin up on the front bench with interest, but only able to hear the muffled sound of the other side of the phone.

_“Mom wants to know where you are right now, she thought you'd be home by now.”_

_“Hey, Munchkin!”_ Trevor’s voice calls, almost sing-song, as Michael put his phone between his shoulder and his ear, freeing his hand to shove his partner’s face away, 

“ _Fuckin’— quit it—!”_

_“What??”_

“Nothing, you know I’m out with Trev— _so,_ you made it home from _your_ thing before your old dad did, huh? Taking the opportunity to be on the other side of this conversation?”

_“Are you drunk?”_

“No, sweetheart— I’m on my way home anyways, alright? Tell your mother to get some sleep, she doesn't have to wait up for me. You too, _if you're gonna be ready for the semester…”_

_“Ugh!”_

“Love you. _Bye,”_

“Bye Tracey-bee— you _fuck._ You _shitstain,”_ Philips growls, having heard the sound of the phone being hung up, _on Tracey’s end,_ of course, but hostility being directed at Michael felt only right.

“She heard you just fine, Trevor.”

“Oh _shit,_ is Tracey De Santa _your_ kid?” Packie pipes up after an extended silence, and the fact that he… A man of _his_ caliber had been aware of Tracey after her stint on national television, had filled her father with dread. “She was— she was _robbed_ by those— those chimps an’ their _carnal urges!_ Like, when she came on, I was all, oh I dunno, but then she— then she _really_ got me invested. I wanted her to _win! Fuck_ those fuckin’ _monkeys!”_

“I’m sure she’d agree with you— I’ll tell her you said that…” 

As Patrick's body fell to the car floor for the second or third time of this trip, Trevor sort of nudges him with his foot when he takes a little too long to recover and get back up, before intervening in his own and grabbing him by the arm to yank him up.

“Oh, Tracey’s my _girl,_ she’s probably the closest thing I’ll ever have to a daughter, I’d tear any man limb from limb for her, the way her _own_ father should, _Michael—_ but I don't know if she could ever defeat a real concept piece like Three Masturbating Monkeys. It's art. Saying otherwise is just bias. You know I have their shirt? _Love_ that thing!”

“Fuck you, man, no fuckin’ culture—” Patrick spits, his body already slipping down the pleather, but his hands desperately cling to the car door on his side, all to come to her defense. “—She _wrote_ that song… Nobody did that before, at least past the rehearsals… That was a first in the finals… Man, I love Fame or Shame, I love garbage… _Fuck!”_

Coming up on Patrick’s apartment building, the Peyote pulled up to the curb, hitting it and having one wheel drive up onto it, making the vehicle tilt a bit, and his drunken vessel began to roll— struggling for a moment to get a grip of the handle before touching the pavement with his hands, effectively crawling out of the vehicle. They hear the other door open and shut.

“Oh, he’s a _grown man,_ T, I think the guy can walk himself up to his own apartment,”

“Yeah, I can walk meself up to m’ own place!” Packie, not knowing he was yelling, _yells,_ as if he were loudly proclaiming his intoxication, but really just couldn't control the volume of his voice right now— stumbling to get upright, and then landing on his elbows to keep from face planting, upon having already lost his balance.

“Alright. Alright, _alright—”_ Trevor pulls himself across the hood of the car, Franklin letting out some kind of groan while his hands had left visible prints on the windshield. He picks Packie up by the back of his shirt collar, but then slings an arm around his shoulders and begins sauntering towards the front doors.

Michael can't take his eyes off them and their drunken traipse, and all he could _feel_ was Franklin’s gaze upon him.

_“Don’t say it.”_

“I wasn't sayin’ nothing.”

“Well, you were gonna say something to me about— whatever the hell _that_ is, that we’re watching, _and I’m telling you not to.”_

Patrick’s body started getting more limp, seemingly with every step, and something about what was happening right now had been so familiar to him— feeling a sensation in his heart that hopefully wasn't the precursor of it stopping, having quit his longest, favorite habit so suddenly and without assistance, but his brain was too torpid to make the critical connection to remember, for the time being. 

They approach the elevator. His body grows cold. He remembers his face, he remembers where he was, and _exactly what they were doing—_ and Trevor gives him a brash _shove,_ releasing him from his physical support and letting him collapse in the lift. Packie looks up, his vision a blur, and the doors beginning to close on the other man's silhouette.

“Next time I see you, we’re _killing some CEO_ , or funding eco-terrorists. Or _becoming_ eco-terrorists!” He says, looking like his lips were almost close enough to get caught in the doors before they sealed… Officially separating Patrick from the eyes of anyone else. Alone, the only thing accompanying him being his warped reflection in the steel.

_“Shit…”_ He reaches for the buttons, lighting up the fifth floor and managing to stand up, his shoulder and forehead pressed up against the wall. 

You’d think after five years of living alone that he’d be able to get used to the emptiness that he felt every time he was by himself. Sometimes he thinks about it less, but for the first time in a long while he was able to feel a fraction of the feelings he experienced when he had _people_ around him. Bringing girls home from whatever bar or club it was, and waking up in the morning next to people he couldn't recognize in the least only took him so far— it was nothing like he had before. Hell, the only lasting relationships he’s built was with his coke dealer, and now _that’s_ bust.

The frustrating thing about it was that he had nobody to blame on the fact that this life he had in Los Santos barely resembled one, after this long. 

_Only himself._

The doors open again, and he’s at his floor, and it's hardly a few steps before getting to the place that's his— a _wasteland,_ even considering the fact that he’d moved in here a couple weeks ago, there weren’t many possessions that he had here with him. He wondered if his room back home was just the same as he left it, the way that his mother insists over the phone whenever he asks. Like he’d left his soul there.

Patrick’s body made its way to the bed, shoes already kicked off, at that point running on auto-pilot, lying his upper half down at the foot of it and proceeding to claw his way up the mattress to rest his head in the pillows, peeling his clothes off and kicking to get underneath the covers.

...It seemed as though the moment he closed his eyes, he could see his face, the way he remembered it.

Packie _dreams_ about him. On a constant basis, maybe— but maybe not. But it was much more than he’d like, _far more_ than he could ever, _ever_ admit to any living person. Maybe not even himself. 

_He remembers his face more than anything._ But it was his _touch_ that typically eluded him. It was a sensation that his mind could very rarely replicate for him, and it was the most haunting when it could. _That_ was when he could feel that fullness in his chest, when his own brain could lead him to believe that life was somehow back to the way that it was, that whirlwind era of his life where he still had him. 

His warmth. His breath, with or without the faint aroma of whatever they’d been drinking together… And his _hands._

Whatever kind of shit that happens in these dreams of his, he frequently has a hard time remembering events, but God, he always remembers the way he gets to _have him._

**Niko,** in bed with him, staring down at him from above, holding the sides of his face with his beautiful hands— and he's looking at him as if he’s the only thing that matters to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave comments or ill cry


End file.
